Post navigation

Chad VanGaalen, Mr. Little Jeans, and armed assault on Dundurn St.

There are some songs that define your existence. They shape the pieces of your life; they embed themselves in your memory like fibers in a cotton weave, the pattern only visible from standing far away.

Chad VanGaalen’sPeace on the Rise will always remind me of how I spent this past spring. I think the reason that I liked this song immediately was because it sounded so familiar – how I’ve always wanted Grizzly Bear to sound.

A policeman just knocked on my door to ask if I knew anything about the ‘incident’ that occurred this afternoon at the end of my street.

Not quite sure what he was talking about, I gave him my information and closed the door. Being cut of a curious cloth, I proceeded to perform a Google search:

This was what I found:

Police are looking for two men after an assault at Murphy’s Sub shop on Dundurn Street left the owner in serious condition.

Superintendant Ken Bond said the robbery happened at around 3 p.m., and seriously injured owner Albert Murphy. The first attacker is described as a white man, 35-40 years old with a slim build and short brown hair. He’s approximately 5-8 to 5-10 and fled east on Chatham Street on a blue BMX bike.

The second is a six-foot man with grey hair, aged 50-55, who fled north. Police have spoken to one witness, and the K-9 unit had been called in to look for clues.

Wayne Booth, who was across the street at the time, said a young man approached the sub shop at Dundurn Street South and Chatham Street on his bicycle and proceeded to take a club into the store. Booth said Murphy’s head was “split open.” Spots of blood could be seen on the entrance to the sub shop.

Booth added that the man left on his bicycle east on Chatham with Murphy’s wallet, but not before a retired firefighter unsuccessfully attempted to stop him. Brian Woods said he didn’t see what had happened, but came by after someone called him about the incident.

“He’s a staple in the neighbourhood,” said Woods of Murphy, adding the sub shop has been around since 1975. Murphy’s Subs was previously robbed in 1993.

I have seen the overgrown hoodlums on my street, circling the neighborhood with unmarked juice bottles full of sloshing brown liquid, leering at anyone with breasts. They’re only here because the LCBO and The Beer Store are on the corner. Every Sunday, they drag sagging cardboard boxes filled with dirty glass bottles so that they can get a few cents off their next binge.

I live in a good neighborhood; an old-fashioned suburb in the middle of downtown. Albert Murphy was a good, kind man just trying to earn a living doing something that no one else really wants to do.

Today, a grown man used a club to split a completely defenseless man’s head open this afternoon and sped away on a children’s bicycle.